Ghosts in the Machine Read online

  It’s Saphira’s turn. Holding onto the staff counts as touching wood. Just as long as it’s not Skip Turn again.

  Physical Attack.

  Target: Wolf A.

  She whacks Wolf A on the flank. The staff springs right back, as a numbing vibration runs up her arms and stuns her shoulder blades. Hurts me more than it hurts you, Wolf A. Saphira will still feel the whiplash on her arms if she survives until the next turn. She hasn’t broken a single lustrous wolf hair.

  Wolf A doesn’t give Saphira a second glance: it sinks its fangs into Mason’s knee. He lets out a bloodcurdling howl. When Surge screams, it is the only time they get to hear each other’s voices. Saphira expects Mason’s to be hoarse, like he gargled gravel every morning. Instead, she’s always surprised at how high-pitched he is.

  Nivan’s next move is disturbingly reasonable.

  Item: Healing Potion.

  Target: Mason.

  Pea-Brain seems to be learning. The warm fuzzies Mason anticipate from Nivan evaporate the moment they hear the distinct error beep: they are out of Healing Potions. Nivan’s turn is wasted. The Baton of Pain is passed to Wolf B now. It takes a full minute before lunging at Caime, only to miss as Caime evades its attack. All things considered, Caime is still as quick as ever.

  Wolf A returns to its position. There are mere specks of blood on Mason’s robe, but the damage is clear. He tries to stand up and fails. No wonder, his leg is the shape of a curly fry. Tough, there’s no sick leave or disability pension for heroes. Mason has work to do.

  Skill: Fireball.

  Target: Kylin.

  If Mason has an opinion, he’s not showing it. He does what he does best, casting an ineffective spell with as much professional pride as a goat shitting off a cliff.

  Fire elementals look aggressive and powerful, but using fire against a wind elemental? There should be a special Hell for people this vain. To a very trained eye, the only hint of damage on Kylin is a singed whisker, who prepares to unleash Wind Bind. Saphira bets the largest gemstone on her staff that Pea-Brain thinks “gentler” elementals like wind are reserved for styling hair.

  Wind Bind creates a vortex around Nivan. Its immaculate programming leaves enough downward draft that pins him to the ground. Sand particles buffet Nivan, adding new lacerations by the second. But that’s nothing compared to the force of the air around him forming a compression tunnel so he can’t breathe. Wind Bind isn’t going to subside anytime soon. He’s on the way out and he knows it.

  ***

  Nivan’s a simple, young man, with one simple facial expression no matter the terror. For a moment, Saphira feels like she’s back in Forest of Bells with him.

  That’s when she has an idea.

  The hit rate is a curious thing. The otherwise watertight system has one flaw—it cannot truly generate accuracy randomly. Instead, the law decides the upper and lower limits, and anything in between is in Surge’s tiny amount of control.

  Saphira’s healing spells have a hit rate of 86.4% to 94.9%: if she tries her best to hit, she will heal 94% of the time. For all the scripting and programming, manipulating the probability is within her reach.

  Small miracles.

  It felt as trivial as a consolation plastic toy in a treasure chest until now. She will try harder than she ever has. She’s going for the 86.4%.

  Pea-Brain gives Saphira the command to heal every turn. She aims anywhere and everywhere that isn’t her allies. She can’t help but spill some healing on Surge, but if she’s lucky, they will not stay alive. One by one, her party falls. They writhe and struggle like crushed worms, but it won’t be long. It won’t be long.

  I’m sorry. Saphira misses. This is it, Mason. I thought we would have an eternity together and I would get to know you one day: I guess I should’ve taken the initiative.

  Saphira misses again. Sorry, Nivan. I know you wanted to live on, but I need to put a stop to this. You deserve to have a life, not a joke.

  We don’t have to keep on suffering like this. Saphira misses again. Goodnight, Caime. I hope you don’t dream, but have the deepest, most peaceful sleep.

  It takes forever, but she’s the last one standing. Among the mangled bodies, Saphira’s resolve is absolute. Missing herself with her healing spells takes more skill than ever, and with the injuries adding up it becomes harder and harder to pull it off.

  But she’s diligent and a damn good Healer. She always has been.

  I don’t believe in another life. But if there is such a thing, I hope it’s better than this one. If fate demands our souls are intertwined, let’s defy fate by never crossing paths. Let’s never see each other on the other side.

  Patched Up

  Ryan Morning

  Drakeguy

  Project Lead

  Many of you have reported that Coster the Grenadier's “Apex” ability, Bombardment, is not calculating damage per its in-game description: it is currently adding 60% to projectile damage instead of reducing it to that amount.

  We're aware of the problem, and we intend to address it as soon as possible.

  ***

  It was the lack of recrimination. Somehow the way the entire faction took the news made him feel as if they'd always known that he was a fraud, that he was only popular because of a glitch, that he was destined to be rejected from tournament play. He could've taken anger, but pity brought him low.

  Raya the Blade and Kamen the Skirmisher were out of their comfort zone. Stone-faced even by the standards of a character whose in-game emotional spectrum ran from good-natured determination to grim determination, Coster glowered at his uneaten meal and brooded.

  "What Kamen meant to say," Raya said sharply, "was your other abilities are good, even though you didn't have to use them."

  "Exactly!" Kamen beamed, plucked from the hole he'd been so enthusiastically digging. "The Anti-Armor thing. See, for Raya and me, armor is one of our counters. We can't do much to it."

  "Put it this way," said Coster. "Your Double Tap sees a lot of use, doesn't it?"

  "It's sort of my staple, yeah," said Kamen, sipping his drink.

  "Whereas I've gone entire matches without Anti-Armor being used. Without anyone even investing character points in it. For the time it takes to deploy, I could be dealing damage."

  "Well, uh..."

  "It's a situational ability for a situation that never arises. Your second ability is an instantaneous shot that deals bonus damage and always hits, mine is a ponderous pseudo-tactical timewaster that leaves me wide open for half a year."

  "Now hang on," Raya protested, "earlier you were saying this was a team game. So many abilities interlink, work off of each other."

  "Raya, you can take anyone apart up close. You practically go it solo. Kamen runs around harassing the opposition and then falls back if it gets too hot.”

  Kamen shrugged and took another drink, as if to say, yeah, that’s how I roll.

  “Me?” Coster sighed. “I lob grenades at the mobs. And I was fine with that, it was how I worked. But late game? By late game I'd unlocked Bombardment, and I wasn't on the sidelines anymore. I called the shots. Literally! A volley of grenades right into the middle of the enemy and then everyone else would mop up."

  Coster reached below his seat and brought out his grenade launcher. Like everything else in the game, it was comically oversized: there was no way of mistaking it for any other weapon, even when viewed from a distance.

  "I'd figured out how it all worked. I was used to it, happy with it. On the bad days, when my player was new or maybe unlucky or Hell, even just plain lousy at the game, I coped. Because I knew how it would work on the good days."

  He dropped the launcher. The table sagged and the crockery rattled.

  "What'll happen now? I checked out the numbers. If they tweak it, Bombardment's effectiveness will be halved. Worse than halved. And even now it's not a win button! Sometimes the enemy is just too tough, there are too many of them, and they mow through us even after I soften them up.
So if the devs make it worse than that, where do I fit in? What do I actually do?"

  "You'll still be in the roster," Raya said gently. "You're one of the original characters. People will always play you."

  "Right," Kamen agreed, "you were in the launch trailer and everything."

  "I don't know if I want that. I think I'd sooner be forgotten than be “that guy,” the one only the delusional newbies play because they just don't understand how bad I am." Coster sunk onto the table. "Becoming a handicap for old hands that deliberately pick a shitty character to show how great they are—"

  "Oh,” someone interrupted, “am I missing your pity party? I'm upset that I wasn't sent an invitation."

  "I tried," Raya said automatically, "but the computer insisted that smarmy@jackass wasn't a real email address."

  "Beat it, Meraclus," said Kamen.

  Coster looked up. Meraclus definitely looked the part of a smarmy jackass. Something sort of chiselled about the face, likely a rip-off of a star from a particular kind of action movie: glowing eyes, a high-collared overcoat, and a sword that loomed on the back like a surfboard. It was all so clichéd that it made Coster, a tall gruff weapons expert with a cheek scar, shudder at how much worse his design could’ve been.

  "I just thought I'd come by," Meraclus continued, all smiles, "and help console the cheater."

  "Oh, screw you," Kamen stiffened, and would have stood up if Coster hadn't placed a hand on his shoulder.

  "Please, like he didn't know something was amiss." Meraclus smirked. He leaned towards Coster. "Newsflash: if one of your grenades can't take out a siege tank with one shot, didn't it make you suspicious when an apparently weakened grenade managed to do it?"

  "You're not big, and you're not clever," said Kamen. "Back off. I sure as Hell know that you don't come out on top when we fight."

  Meraclus didn't change his expression. Coster realized that the smirk must have been his face's default, at-rest appearance; what a thing for a modeller to do to their creation. God knew how that'd affect a personality.

  "I rather think I am big and clever, actually. I have higher attribute scores than you. You only ever beat me because you're always running around, too scared to face me."

  "What an incredible comeback," said Raya. "He only beats you, repeatedly, because he's faster and more skilled and refuses to fight on your terms. Wow. How can he hear that one without being burned to cinders."

  "How very mature."

  Coster had had enough. He got the feeling that Meraclus was the type to assume that silence wasn't being the bigger man. He likely saw a refusal to engage as cowardice, and right now Coster agreed.

  "Says the man who brings up martial performance and then regrets it because being reminded of his failure hurts his feelings," Coster clapped, but briefly, because that sort of thing annoyed him. "Well done, I'm now acutely aware of how terrible a character I am, so please quit embarrassing yourself."

  Meraclus strode off, aloof and triumphant, although no one in the canteen appeared impressed or otherwise moved by the confrontation.

  "Don't mind that oaf." Raya watched him swagger off. "They added Merac in v1.6; yet another sword swinger, one of those try-hards that thinks that because the in-game fiction portrays him as a badass, he's actually a badass."

  "Didn't even have any food with him," Kamen said disgustedly. "Came here looking to poke fun at the veteran. What a joke."

  "He's right, though," Coster sighed. "It's cheating. Straight-up cheating."

  "Come on! You didn't know."

  "You know what he's like. You shouldn't let him get to you," Raya insisted.

  "He doesn't, don't worry. But it's nothing I haven't told myself. A bunch of my players knew about it, I'm sure of it, and that doesn't reflect well on me. Especially when they insist that if it's in-game, the devs must have meant for it to happen."

  "Like anyone's ever cared about the natural order of things."

  "It's like, uh, an athlete being slipped steroids by someone else," said Kamen. "Not their fault, when you think about—"

  "Not the best example," Raya interjected.

  "I imagine the average athlete would notice it when they grew unexpected muscles," said Coster. "No. On some level I must have known about it. I deserve to be nerfed, it happens to other people all the time. I'm just too damn selfish to take it."

  "Forgetting silly hypotheticals for now,” Raya continued, with a meaningful glance at Kamen, “you shouldn't be so quick to admit defeat."

  "How d’you mean?"

  "She means, sure, things will change,” Kamen explained, “but who's to say they'll be totally insurmountable?"

  "Indeed," Raya agreed, "it's all very well to be gracious about the hand you're dealt but there's little point in speculating about the deck."

  After a moment of silence Coster replied, "I'm not sure that metaphor works."

  "Sorry,” Raya shrugged. “I threw everything at the wall to see what would stick.”

  "The entire franchise loves to do that," Kamen exclaimed brightly. He currently had a sheathed katana and an 1800s S&W revolver on his hip. “If I hadn’t seen how the players reacted, I’d never have realized that it’s a little weird to have knights fighting cowboys fighting wizards fighting robots.”

  "I never did understand whether my “people” are a nation state or an alien species," Coster mused. “Perhaps I’m just a human who happens to be a sort of fluorescent blue color.”

  "I wouldn't try to figure out the devs' motives,” Raya glowered. "Lots of insensitivity and cultural appropriation."

  "You do go on about that a lot," Kamen said, a tad reproachfully.

  "I'm an Indian woman who keeps spouting Korean idioms, I dual-wield sais, and for some reason this tattoo on my face is a Chinese hanzi."

  "Ah. Well. Point taken."

  "They haven't even given you a mask,” she continued, “so I can't say I get the logic behind calling you Kamen. Unless it's a metaphor."

  "Why would I have a mask?"

  Raya saw that Kamen was serious, and shrugged. "Never mind."

  Coster had a joyless spoonful of whatever the pabulum in his bowl was meant to be.

  "So," said Kamen, not a character used to silence, "what's the tattoo say in Chinese?"

  "In my bio, the developers claim it means 'swiftness'," Raya explained. "But according to a bunch of people on the official forums, it actually means 'feet.’ More or less."

  Coster grimaced. He could imagine the nicknames that'd come from that. Sometimes, if they were really popular, the devs themselves embraced them.

  "Maybe they'll sneak in a change to your texture," he hazarded.

  "Even though it was reported four versions ago, Kamen's head still turns invisible when you view him from behind. I'm not getting my hopes up."

  "Hey, I'm part Spostarite, and we're genetically engineered to appear transparent from certain angles. It aids stealth..."

  "There we go again," Raya said bitterly. "Don't fix things, just try and work with them. Flavor your flaws and they add character. People will fight tooth and nail to defend what's there, just because it's there."

  Except for me, Coster thought. I'm broken by merit of being too good. Now the truth is out, now everyone hated me all along and they shout down anyone who says otherwise. And they're right to do it.

  ***

  Coster emerged into the recroom and found half the faction clustered around the main screen.

  He tapped Natalia the Spy on the shoulder. "What's going on?"

  Natalia goggled. "Are you kidding? Haven't you seen it happen yourself?"

  "Let's just say my Downtime has been long and uninterrupted," Coster said icily. "Now players veto me when I'm picked."

  "Oh. It's about Giger."

  Coster wasn't all that familiar with Giger, within or without matches. The Gunner kept to himself, which Coster could respect, and as their in-game duties overlapped they rarely found themselves picked to play on the same team. "What about hi
m?"

  "His gun doesn't work," Kamen said simply, walking towards the huddle. "Just came out of a match with him."

  Coster frowned. "Doesn't work?"

  "Exactly what it sounds like. He sets it up on that little bipod, pours fire into the mobs, nothing happens."

  "Same muzzle flash and collision particles," Natalia added, "but it's just a stream of bullets doing nothing."

  "It's a plasma gun," Raya corrected. "I read his bio."

  "The devs must have dropped an update," Kamen said sadly. "Undocumented changes. Screwed something up big time."

  Natalia obligingly rewound the onscreen replay for Coster's benefit. Sure enough, standing on the top of a hill, the hulking form of Giger was blazing at the ever-advancing mobs. They were completely unfazed by the showy red streaks of light.

  Normally a Gunner player was a devastating counter to a mob advance. Many a system would chug and struggle to render the wisps of blood and ash and ragdolling corpses when Giger brought his cannon to bear on a wave of fodder. It ate mobs and crapped out victory points.

  There was something familiar, and disquieting, about the gritted teeth and steely fortitude of the in-game Giger. Features unchanging even though he was doing absolutely nothing to the encroaching horde.

  Coster swore. "When did this happen?"

  "The update dropped a couple of hours ago. And, uh, it's not just Giger," said Kamen. "It's all the v1.6 crowd, as far as we can tell."

  "The usual," Raya stated. "They fixed something and in the process, broke something else. Big time."

  Barely listening, Coster sidled across to another of the viewscreens and scrolled through the available replays until he found the character he was looking for.

  "It's an obvious bug," Natalia agreed. "They'll try to get a fix out ASAP."

  "Yeah, from what I hear Giger and the rest are laughing it off," said Kamen. "Sure, it ain't nice, but it'll be resolved soon."

  Coster watched the replay of a man standing amidst a crowd, swinging a ludicrously gargantuan sword. He died a moment later, his killers unscathed, wearing a confident smirk right up until the end.